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Bedbugs!Reporter Brandy Allport and editor Joy Batteh-Freiha were working on a package about bedbugs. AME for Visuals Denise Reagan suggested a cutaway of a house, showing how they get in there and how to get rid of them. I researched how bedbugs appear, how they live and how to kill the suckers. I've long been a fan of the cartoon-y cutaways John Telford used to do in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, so I turned to some of his pieces for inspiration. The bedbugs crawling over the luggage was a touch I thought John would appreciate, so I put it in there. What resulted was something packed with lots of color-coded information presented in a way that didn't feel like a science textbook. Or so I hope. |
Teenage plastic surgeryTracy Jones pitched a story about the plastic surgeries and cosmetic procedures most common among teenaged girls. I thought of an Asbury Park Press page in which dolls were annotated to show tattoos and thought we could adapt the concept for Tracy's story. I wanted to show the data -- the costs of these procedures and the numbers of girls getting them -- while keeping the feel of a features page. The plastic doll worked well with the story, evoking the plastic surgery and the youth of the girls getting these procedures. |
Tiger Woods word cloudIt was a Friday in February just outside Jacksonville when Tiger Woods gave his first press conference after the infamous car accident that revealed his marital infidelities. We wanted our presentation to indicate that his words were going to be carefully scrutinized and repeated, so AME for Visuals Denise M. Reagan suggested a word cloud. Denise plugged the text of the speech into Worldle.com to get a rough idea of what it would look like, then gave me a print-out. The site separated capitalized words from the lowercase version of the same words ("Behavior," "behavior," etc.) so I combined the word counts and reorganized the cloud in a way that fit our space. For the instances where we combined words, I recalculated the word sizes using a square root formula used for bubble charts I received from former Missourian graphics editor Reuben Stern. |
Periodic Table of MetalJudas Priest and Whitesnake were slated to come to town, which to us seemed like an odd pairing. My AME had wanted to find an opportunity for us to use a periodic table, and this proved to be our chance. An assistant features editor researched the genre and sub-genres, and then the reformed metalheads in the newsroom (myself included) made our pitches for who did and didn't belong in the chart. I took that information and then color-coded each section. To show the element's symbol, I wanted to move beyond simply using letter combinations. For bands that had recognizable logos, we tweaked those to two or three letters. |
Mayor's discussion of murder, crimeIn the spring of 2006, Jacksonville's murder rate was rising to unseen levels for that early in a calendar year. To help put the story into perspective, The Times-Union sent reporters to cover all 16 public appearances made by Mayor John Peyton during a two week period to see how often and how much he talked about the rising murder rate or crime. Inspired by a New York Times graphic, I thought it would be effective to use the mayor's picture as a graphic element. To show whether he was "putting a face to the issue," we could show his picture at full opacity for the incidences when he significantly discussed murder and crime. For the occasions when he briefly discussed the topic, we showed his face at a lighter opacity, and for the instances when he didn't mention the topic at all, his face was scaled to an even lighter opacity. Thus, the casual reader could understand the graphic at a glance but the more serious readers could spend more time with it to get more information. In the description of each event, we explained the context of the appearance. In some cases, such as reading to children, discussing homicide might have seemed out of place. |
Billing: The Mayo wayOur health reporter had a story about how Mayo's approach to Medicare has raised concerns and criticisms, so we wanted to compare how Mayo bills Medicare patients with how other clinics bill Medicare patients. It can be a sterile subject, so I wanted to add some whimsy. Using each stick figure to represent a different party involved, I showed how each party participates in the payment process. |
GrillsFormer Times-Union Taste columnist Dan Macdonald returned in April 2010 to write a monthly column. His first piece was a primer on grills and what to look for when buying a new one, and we decided to break it out as a centerpiece. He described his ideal grill, and I cobbled it together by looking at several online grill catalogs. He envisioned a blueprint motif similar to the opening of "MythBusters," which I think fit the column well. I suggested to the page designer that we carry the rough edges throughout the package, so the edges of the blue and white screens match the strokes around the grill. |
The single guy's cureWhen I pitched graphic showing all the options for single people on Valentine’s Day, we decided to narrow the focus to single men because most of what we’d seen in other publications focused on women. We thought of the movie “High Fidelity,” and how the depressed male character treated singlehood as an affliction. I pored through dozens of songs, movies, TV shows and found a handful of single male archetypes. We would use a single guy’s medicine cabinet as our frame and show these single guy archetypes on medicine bottles. A "High Fidelity" drinking game anchors the page. |
Policy ChangesA local group released a report detailing policy changes the group felt could curb childhood obesity. The crux of the changes focused on the inner city. There was no one photo or rendering that detailed this group's vision, so the onus was on us to figure out how to convey this. We decided on creating a fictitious cityscape showing the ideals the group was advocating. I took inspiration from former St. Louis Post-Dispatch graphic artist John Telford, whose cityscapes were simple enough to not be overwhelming but quirky and detailed enough to hold interest. |
Tax Increment FinancingProposed changes to tax increment financing methods in the area could be abstract and boring to readers not familiar with how public financing works, so I wanted to give them a light primer on the subject. I had long been a fan of former St. Louis Post-Dispatch graphic artist John Telford because he could break down complex business concepts in fun, accessible explainer graphics. With him as my inspiration, the reporter and I condensed the nuts and bolts of TIF into bullet points which I then illustrated. |
High School Musical 2Times-Union AME for Visuals Denise M. Reagan and I watched the first "High School Musical" movie to get ideas for how to illustrate the sequel. We explored imagery associated with high school -- notebook doodles, loose leaf, varsity letters, etc. -- until we came up with something that we hadn't seen used as much: lockers. Many other covers might have featured publicity stills, but putting the title on the combination lock is a subtle but effective way to illustrate the concept. That hand on the lock belongs to my friend Jenn Davis, and the picture was shot at the school where she taught. |
Mortgage opportunitiesA reporter was working on a primer about mortgages for our weekly biz tab. Specifically, the reporter focused on mortgages from the perspective of banks and credit unions: how they make money, how they lose money, what the consumer needs to know, etc. Without art for the cover, we were tasked with conveying rather dry and abstract ideas. Inspired by a Detroit Free Press cover where the state of Michigan was composed of type, I created a house using terms specific to the story. It was one of my first forays into illustrating with type, and was a good save for a story that on first glance didn't lend itself to illustration. |
Fidelity's Latest ChangeIn a few months, Jacksonville-based Fidelity National Financial went from one company to three companies to two publicly traded companies. We wanted to convey this change in a way that addressed its the financial implications. Using actual pocket change allowed us to show change and money in one simple concept. I scanned these coins in and then played around with the placement in Photoshop. |
NaNoWriMo book coverNaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is an annual novel writing project in which participants write each day of November until they have completed a 50,000-word novel. If you complete your novel, you will receive one printed copy of your book. My friend Tiffany Griffith completed hers, and asked me to design her book cover. Her novel, "A Drink Between Friends," focuses on a young Irish woman who moves to Florida after losing her job and fiancee. There, she helps her grandfather run his local pub, and begins the process of putting her past struggles behind her while contemplating a new life in the U.S. While not a romance novel, per se, the book is what Tiffany called "chick lit." For the cover, I talked with her about conveying the themes of Florida, Ireland, romance and beer. I think we succeeded. |
